Emile Benoit is the pseudonym of the author of Essays and Aphorisms of the Higher Man, a collection of original philosophical aphorisms and fragmentary essays. Benoit holds a B.A. and M.A. in philosophy and his aphorisms have a distinctively late 19th-century Nietzschean feel and flair to them, not least in the echo of Nietzsche’s “over-man” in the book’s title. Even the language itself has a delightfully antiquated feel to it: complex sentences that couch dark, faintly misanthropic observations in an artful formality. Though they may feel like something from another era, the moral musings in Benoit’s sayings are never out of fashion. These aphorisms, Benoit writes, “stand alone but they are also a part of the larger whole of the book itself, which argues for an artistic perspective to one’s outlook on life.” A selection:

The vast majority of men are little more than children without the excuse of youth to forgive them.

The fearful are often more dangerous than the man who seeks to do you harm.

Man carries on as if he possessed something of a free will because he has no other choice but to do so.

In matters of greatest importance, it is generally not the cream that rises to the top, but the foam.

There are a great many means to suicide, only a few of them resulting in actual death.